


My Life For The Asking

by copperfire



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, But Thorin is the main character after all that, Eventual Happy Ending, Gen, but there is a lot of angst first, i am not kidding about the character death thing, i swear it is there right at the end, there is a lot of that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-07 00:55:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8776705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperfire/pseuds/copperfire
Summary: He discovers what he has lost, and then he searches.Or: Five times Thorin fails to find his nephews in the human world, and the one time he does.Originally started (and not finished, to my shame) in 2013 on the kink meme (http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/3900.html?thread=7109948#t7109948), now finally getting its ending.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I originally started this fic in February 2013, got five sixths of the way through it (i.e. all the angsty bits and none of the happy ending) and then stopped writing because I am a terrible person (there were real life things, and then I felt terrible about stopping and wasn't sure how to finish it, and then I just felt guilty about the whole thing). Anyway, almost four years later I have finally managed to pull myself together and finish it, and I am tidying up the already written bits as I go, so there should be a new chapter a day (well, two today, as this is just a tiny prologue chapter), and it will actually have an ending this time! So, uh, sorry, I am trying to be a better ficcer.
> 
> Please tell me if you think I should tag anything else! And, uh, warnings for purple prose and run-on sentences, because I do apparently write in a really flowery fashion.
> 
> Fic title cribbed from Simon and Garfunkel's 'Song for the Asking'.

**Prologue**

It is always different.

Sometimes he remembers early, sometimes late, sometimes as a child, sometimes when he is old and worn and has far too many years upon him, but he never dies without remembering, without knowing what he has never had and yet has always lost.

Sometimes it sneaks up on him, a quiet, yearning ache for he knows not what until it rolls over him in an enveloping wave, and he wonders how he could ever have forgotten.

Sometimes he wakes up one morning and knows everything, sometimes it comes in drips of loss and confusion, sometimes he chokes upon a scream because the first thing he remembers is the end.

Sometimes he remembers all the times before, sometimes he remembers only the first, sometimes he remembers fruitless searches through continents and generations, sometimes all he can remember is Uncle, and two sets of bright eyes and solid faith, and, always, always, mud and blood and death.

It is always the same.

He discovers what he has lost, and then he searches.


	2. A Hazy Shade of Victory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the first actual chapter. Chapter title mangled from Simon and Garfunkel's 'A Hazy Shade of Winter'.

**One: A Hazy Shade of Victory**

The first time he has coarse rope in his hands and is pulling in time with his shipmates, one eye on the horizon as they bring the _Wind Viper_ up onto the shingled beach. In the space between one heave and another he is overwhelmed, an array of images and sounds and feelings that have him stumbling and gasping out, "Nephews!" before he has even quite worked out what he has seen. His fumbling does not go unnoticed, and Dwalin - his benchmate, his shieldbrother, his oldest friend - gives him a less than subtle elbow in his ribs.

"Thorin," he hisses, "Don't tell me you've been at the ale."

Thorin can find no breath or words to answer, for all he can remember is flashing grins and 'We will follow you Uncle,' and his next heave upon the rope is purely instinctual. He cannot think of anything but how impossible it seems that he did not remember before, for how could he forget Fíli and Kíli? He wonders if there was something more - a mountain far more than mere rock and stone, and a beast far fiercer than any that proudly rears over the prow of a ship - but all that is solid and touchable is that he once had nephews that were dearer to him than gold, or glory, or respect, and that he had lost them.

He is granted no time to think upon this though, for the _Wind Viper_ has barely been safely beached - elegant lines rearing high over rough shingle, majestic even when not afloat - before they are called to march. Balin's crew is one of the last to arrive, and there is a scramble for helmets and mail, and then Thorin is trotting alongside Dwalin and Bifur, streaming across the land as small parts in a great host, a host hungry for battle, for gold, for land. 

All Thorin can think of is a life once lived, a life where all is soft and indistinct except for two faces.

They travel hard, and it is not long before the night when Balin gathers them around the fire and tells them that in the morning, they attack Eoferwic. They all drink that night and sing and no-one speaks of death, and later Thorin lies awake and looks at the sky and thinks of war. He is thirty and no stranger to battle, even if he has never gained glory or wealth from it, for though he fights hard and well he has the enmity of powerful people, and so it is likely that he will forever remain a member of Balin's crew instead of a shipmaster or a jarl in his own right. It used to irk him, that others advanced while he always remained upon the rowing bench, but now he cares little, for memories of triumphant battle and the song of the fight are overlain by seeing two bodies close even in death and feeling his world crumble around him.

He does not sleep that night, but the morning dawns bright and cold, and he finds he is not tired. 

The battle is swift and sharp and bloody, and Thorin finds himself in the push and shove and brutal short blades of a shield wall, Dwalin to his left, Bifur to his right, straining and swearing against men ill-prepared and not expecting a fight, and then they break, and begin to run, and a slaughter begins. Thorin learns later that it was one of the Saxon's feast days - except Saxons have few true proper feasts, and instead sing songs inside their draughty stone buildings, but they are a strange people, with their strange God - and so they were taken by surprise, but in those moments of death and struggle he cares little, for his blood is hot and singing, his sword is swift and he is invincible.

He regroups with Dwalin and Balin closer to the gates, where a last, desperate group have formed another shield wall. They know they are doomed, but they are brave and defiant, and Thorin appreciates that, his comrades appreciate that, for death in battle is true and bold and worthy.

"We will sing songs of your stand," Ivar calls to them, "But you will still die in the mud like the Saxon pigs that you are." He turns to look at his army, gaunt limbs and cold eyes before this great host of men that he has raised, and nods. "Kill them," he says, and he is happily obeyed.

Thorin is not in the shield wall this time, but three lines behind it, and so he bears his sword and waits as the Vikings advance, slowly, for overwhelming numbers is no reason to abandon caution. Even the most desperate, most beaten enemy will still take down good warriors. But the shields meet and the shoving and stabbing begins, and it is then that Thorin sees him.

He is just as he remembers, golden-haired and young, strong and laughing, a sword in his hand and a taunt upon his lips, and Thorin cries out, a harsh call of horror and dismay, for Fíli is part of a brave last stand, a doomed final fight, glorious and courageous in the face of a battle that cannot be won, and Thorin screams a denial that is lost in the noise of the fight. And yet, perhaps Fíli hears, perhaps something in him knows, for he is cocking his head to the side when an axe hooks under his shield and tugs just enough for a sword to slice in, quick and vicious and final. And Fíli is crumpling inwards, blood on gold braids once again, and Thorin can do nothing as his nephew gasps for breath and fails to find any, as he falls and dies.

"No!" The scream is echoing and terrible, tearing at ears and souls, and for a second Thorin thinks it is him, and then a dark-haired man is pushing himself through the Saxon line, still screaming, empty quiver upon his back and sword in hand, and Thorin's grip grows weak upon his shield, for surely, no, the Gods would not demand this of him, would not desire for him to see them both struck down again.

But the Gods do not listen and though Kíli's wild rage takes down several of his enemy, it is only moments before there is an axe in his skull and he too is sinking to the ground, still spitting a defiance at those who take his city, his brother, and his life. Thorin makes no sound, cannot make any sound, and half-expects to hear the snarling of enormous dogs, though he knows not why. All he can see is hair bright and dark trampled into the mud, and the rest of the battle swells around him without his knowledge.

They win, but Thorin's world ends again on a battlefield of greed, and blood, and young lives cut short, and as he sinks to the ground between the bodies of two men he knows better than anyone, and yet has never met at all, he wishes he had never known what he had to lose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical Note: The battle I involve Thorin in here is the capture of the Saxon York (then Eoferwic, and later Jorvik) by the 'Great Heathen Army', a Viking army led by Ivan the Boneless, Ubbe Ragnarsson and Halfdan Ragnarsson in 866. The date is November the 1st, which was All Saint's Day, hence it being a festival day. The city fell (though I take serious artistic license here because I actually have no idea about the details of the battle), and then a Saxon attempt later in 867 to take it back failed, so York remained Viking until 954, when Eric Bloodaxe was defeated by the Saxon King Edred, who was doing his best to make a united England. 
> 
> Inspiration for this section taken from Bernard Cornwell's Saxon/Viking series (apparently called The Last Kingdom series), and Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword Song.
> 
> Non-historical Note: Why did I start in 866 rather than any other time period, as this leaves out huge chunks of human history/prehistory? Mostly because Tolkien was into Norse mythology (his dwarf names are from the Völuspá, the first part of the Poetic Edda, literally from the section called Dvergatal or 'The Catalogue of the Dwarves', and he famously lectured upon and did a translation of Beowulf, among other things) so it both amused me, and seemed somewhat fitting, for Thorin to begin his reincarnation cycles there. Also I think I had just reread Sword Song, and was therefore into this time period.


	3. All That's Left You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the comments and kudos! They are much appreciated.
> 
> Title once again from Simon and Garfunkel, this time from 'Bookends'.
> 
> I also probably should have mentioned this earlier, but I am definitely not a historian by trade, merely an enthusiast, so I do apologise for inaccuracies.

**Twenty: All That's Left You**

The twentieth time he is twenty-two and gasping for breath in fluid choked lungs; fevered dreams shade his mind, and traces of worried prayers drip into his ears, spoken by familiar voices that are wholly alien in his confusion. Through a dark fog of heat and fatigue he sees beaming smiles and steady eyes, and tries to reach out, but his limbs are as weak as thin winter sunlight, and he can only watch as they slide away from him, laughter and confidence vanishing into haze and soot.

"Shh, shh, Thorin," a voice soothes from somewhere far away, and he twists towards it, slipping through clouds and pools until he surfaces to a dark hut, and the worried face of his sister. He tries to speak and coughs instead, harsh, wet attempts to rid himself of the liquid that is slowly drowning him. His sister bears him upright and braces herself against his back; when his lungs finally seem content to remain within his body he feels as though he has run a thousand miles, and he wonders how he can remember walking for days across rugged country towards something he cannot quite remember, but which consumed his every thought - except for those that were snagged by two boys different as steel and fire, yet alike as wheat stalks growing strong and warm in the sun.

His mind is fogged and heavy, but he can remember their names; they are sweet upon his wearied mind like fresh gathered berries, bursting with life and energy, and he wonders why now, why when memory slides away from him if he grasps at it too hard, why now when his sister is gently bidding him to rest and he can only obey. Why now when he has not the strength to find what he has lost?

He slowly slips downwards again, into encompassing darkness and leaden thought, and he wonders if he is remembering in order to give him something to reach for, something with which he can fight this illness that has swept through the village, taking old and young alike as their Lord does nothing to aid those left behind and crops rot in the fields. This plague has no cure, not giving an inch before the well trusted remedies of their wise woman, and before he was lost to it he heard tell that even the great apothecaries and doctors of the cities were unable to help, this dying not sparing even their wealthy patients.

As he sinks back onto rough-woven blankets and tilts sideways into the grasping tendrils of fever, he holds fast to the memory of Fíli and Kíli, and vows to live for them.

It does not work, and two days later Dís buries the last of her family in a shallow plot, after a burial service that had been both brief and cheap, the rhythms well worn to her ears after she has buried her parents and both of her brothers. Why she alone of her kin sickened and then survived she does not know, not when so many around her have died, not when their village has been emptied. She looks across freshly tilled earth to meet the eyes of the man she must now marry, and wonders why she feels as though she has lived this before, why standing alone at the end of her family is no new sensation, why her grief is sharp but almost expected. But she has little time to dwell on that, not when there is so much to do and the village is crumbling, so Dís draws her grief close to her heart, close where it cannot be touched, and carries on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical Note: This is set around 1349, somewhere in southern England, during the Black Death, which killed somewhere in the region of 30 to 60% of Europe's population, and peaked between 1346 and 1353, though it reoccured periodically in Europe until the 19th century. This, obviously, led to huge changes in European history, and there has been a lot of very interesting historical, sociological, and biological research about these effects, and what it actually was, where it came from, and so on. But none of that really shows up here because I kill of my POV character (oops!). The Middle East was also devastated, and it is harder to track the effects in Asia, where outbreaks were originating from.
> 
> If you are interested, Dís marries a man who works in the local Lord's kennels and survives, though they don't have any children together. He has two kids from a previous marriage, though, and I like to think that Dís doesn't have to watch those ones die, at least. (I couldn't find a way to work any of that in, and it isn't relevant to anything except that I have a lot of feelings about Dís.)


	4. An Endless Stream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title this time is, unsurprisingly, from another Simon and Garfunkel song, this time 'Homeward Bound' (Thorin has a long way to go before he can be homeward bound, that's for sure).

**Forty-four: An Endless Stream**

The forty-fourth time, he has always known. Fíli and Kíli have tugged gently at his soul since before he was old enough to realise what his mind was telling him, so that his brothers still laugh over the imaginary friends he proudly presented to the world as a child. He doesn't tell them otherwise, for he cannot explain a bone deep knowledge of two people who were once stars in a shaded sky, flickers of warmth in the cold, sons he could never acknowledge, and companions whom he never doubted. He cannot explain lifetimes where his only constant is his nephews, that his soul has two lodestones and until he finds them once more he will always search, and so he takes their ribbing and says nothing.

He does not know where to begin, for though he is quite sure that when he lives, so do they - a myriad of closely missed opportunities speak plainly to that end - in all his lives he has never found them, not before it is too late. Sometimes he wonders if they too search, if they came to Bannockburn in time to find his body, if they rode to a lonely house on the edge of a wave-beaten shore only to find parents grieving for a son lost at sea. Sometimes he wonders what he will do if he finds them; in his darkest moments he wonders what he will do if he never does. 

Perhaps this is penance, he thinks, a penance for a sin unremembered, committed in that very first life, in a land where the colours seemed brighter and the trees more alive, when talking of dragons was not a laughing matter. It is only Fíli and Kíli that shine brightly from that first life, blazing fires in a field of embers, and when he wonders if perhaps he imagines this all, if he is merely troubled by demons of the mind, he remembers those blazes of life and thinks that he cannot simply have imagined them. Nor, he feels, would his mind create a tale where their end is to die young and broken, and an epilogue where he can never find them. So closely held to his heart are his memories that he can only believe them to be true; and he has to believe that one day, he will once again be able to hold them close in his arms, has to believe or else he could not carry on. 

He knows not where to begin, though, in his search for them, not when he has sought before and never succeeded, not when he has not yet stumbled across any clues in this life, and he cannot live in memories, for the present sweeps him up and carries him along, a greedy tide that once more demands loyalty and blood.

"Sir?" The familiar voice of Sergeant Bofur recalls him from his mental wanderings, and he looks up from the list of supplies he is perusing, aware in an instant that the log he is sitting upon is not particularly comfortable, and that the sun has advanced a significant distance from when he had last raised his head. Seeing that he has his Captain's attention, Bofur continues: "Major Gandalf's coming, Sir. Do you think we're moving off yet?" 

The Company has been waiting in the beating sun since the early morning, but it is nothing they are not used to; the Army is generally very good at hustling them all to be ready and then leaving them to stand and wait. Three years in Spain has taught Thorin to never expect efficiency when it is needed.

"Perhaps," Thorin says, mildly, as he rises. The Major is approaching upon his grey gelding - a fine beast, as Thorin has so often been told, but he has little appreciation for horseflesh himself - and Thorin sketches a salute as they draw near. 

"Sir."

"Ah, good, Captain," Gandalf says, approvingly, "Your men are ready?"

"Yes, Sir. We have been since dawn." Thorin keeps his tone carefully bland.

Gandalf only snorts a laugh in response. "Well, you know our wondrous army. Wellington's about to spit nails, I hear." The twinkle in the Major's eye suggests that he would well support such an act, and not for the first time Thorin wonders at Gandalf's relationship with their General. Wonders, and then considers that it would probably be best to not wonder too closely, for Gandalf's unassuming nature is distinctly misleading. "Your marching orders have changed, I should inform you: You head to San Rafael."

"We do, Sir?" That is news; Thorin's last orders had merely been to move with the rest of the army, as they head north in strength. Wellington's eye is set on Badajoz, though Thorin privately thinks - as do most of those who have seen the place previously - that it is going to take a bloodstained miracle to get them inside.

"I'm embarking upon a small… tour of the country near there, and while you and your men are unlikely to be helpful when I settle down to business, for your lack of tact continues to alarm me, Wellington would prefer it if I wasn't killed before I am able to do so. You're escorting me there, and then moving onto Badajoz the next day." Gandalf sighs. "I fear, however, that I am likely to run out of pipeweed before I manage to return…"

It is a hot and dusty march, but that surprises no-one; sometimes Thorin has a hard time remembering the freezing winds and cruel rains that accompanied the army's limping, frantic retreat to Corunna. It seems that since then Spain and Portugal have only ever give them dry heat and baking sun, but perhaps he has simply been lucky enough to avoid appointment into the mountains during winter. 

The Company is in good spirits, glad to finally be moving. Bofur and Ori lead everyone into a variety of songs that grow progressively more ribald, and become entirely degenerate when Nori becomes involved. The Major only laughs, offers a few pointed suggestions, and Thorin is left to shake his head, much to Sergeant Dwalin's badly hidden amusement.

They reach San Rafael an hour before dusk, when dust has sapped all enthusiasm for singing and ribald jokes have turned into contemplations of sleeping deeply. Thorin's glares spur the Company from the shambled disorder they had achieved on the march into neat rows once more, and they march into the village in good order, even if everyone's eyes are seeking rather too hopefully in search of wine and women. The villagers look torn at the sight of once-red uniforms, presumably weighing up the inevitable rowdy behaviour of soldiers with the equally inevitable money that will be spent, and they are waved through to a large field on the other side of the tiny place, beaten flat by previous encampments.

As pickets are set and the camp made - in that order, for though the word is that the French have either retreated to Badajoz or further north, he has no wish to be caught unawares - Thorin impresses most strongly upon the Company that they will not anger fathers, mothers or husbands, nor will they be drinking enough to render them incapable of marching in the morning. Nori gets a particularly hard look in regards to the former offences - for when he is not breaking hearts he is stealing them blind - while everyone shares the latter glare, for this disparate group of soldiers knows very well how to enjoy themselves.

Later, the tavern is full of good cheer, though Thorin is glad to see that his admonishments appear to have been taken to heart. Bombur has managed to charm the cooks with his very vocal appreciation of their food (no-one mentions that he approaches the most appalling of hardtack with the same enthusiasm), while Bofur has pulled out his pipe, and Ori is entertaining a clustered group of soldiers and villagers with some wild tale out of the books he reads. Ori's a funny one, more educated than he should be, and too well-read to be who he claims, and Thorin suspects secrets lie deep beneath the knitwear that he favours, though he doesn't ask. 

His Company is a motley collection, all possessing histories - Nori was offered the rope or the shilling, Bofur was an Irishman who spoke too plainly before he was a Sergeant, Dwalin ran from accusations of not liking women enough and liking men rather too much, Balin knows no life but the army - but they are good at what they do, and more they are loyal and true, and Thorin can ask for no more, not least as he carries far more history than they shall ever know. Sometimes he thinks he knows them better than he should, knows how they are going to react before they have done so, knows things about their histories that he has no reason to, and he wonders if they are also part of this whole thing, this penance of endless lives he is living. He tries to remember if they were there in that first life, the one where this all started, and it fits when he thinks of it, feels right all the way down to his bones. He can almost feel Balin wise and counseling to his left, older by far than he will ever get in this life, can almost see Dwalin triumphant and bloody in battles very different from these ones they fight with muskets and rifles and bayonets, can almost hear Glóin talking of a son that isn't quite the son he proudly boasts of now to anyone that sits near him for longer than three minutes, can almost hear all of their their voices joining in songs of dragons and gold rather than Frenchmen and pretty women. But like everything else from the beginning that isn't Fíli or Kíli, if he chases those thoughts to hard they are gone, thinner than smoke and more elusive than peace.

"Are you here about the deaths? It was not our information that was wrong, we truly did not know..." A voice both defensive and truculent interrupts his thoughts, and Thorin raises his eyes to find the village priest looking at him nervously, but with a certain fire in his eyes that Thorin appreciates. 

"And you are?" he asks, when the man does not leave. At the implicit invitation he sits down in the chair opposite, clearly gathering up courage for some altercation. Thorin will admit to a certain level of bemusement, for while he does not deny he has a temper - nor can he deny that many of his men do as well - he had not thought that either he or they had ruffled any feathers as of yet.

"Bilbo Baggins," the priest introduces himself as, and at Thorin's questioning eyebrows adds, "My father was English."

"Captain Thorin. Though if you are looking for the senior officer I believe you want Major Gandalf." He nods across the room to where the Major is blowing increasingly intricate shapes with his pipesmoke; Baggins grants him a slightly alarmed look then returns his attention to Thorin.

"No, no, I thought you were the one to come to - you have something of them in your face, so I simply assumed - but it seems I have assumed wrongly?" It is a babbling string of words, a nonsensical brook that serves to elucidate Thorin not at all.

"If you have something to say," he says, a certain amount of impatience in his voice, "Then say it. Do not dither."

"But it appears I was entirely wrong, if you do not know, so perhaps I should - "

"Speak."

"Well, if you'll pardon me for being so forward, I had thought you were here about the two men killed in that skirmish a fortnight ago. There is a certain resemblance, after all, and - "

At that Thorin leans forward, all sudden intensity, an intensity that makes the priest quail a little, for something is shivering along Thorin's mind - a melody he cannot quite hear, a scent slightly too faded to catch - and he fears, oh he fears, that this is another time he will not succeed. He has been most careful, after all, to sire no bastards, and though perhaps this Baggins might simply be overeager, somehow Thorin knows that he is not - knows in the same way he knows intricate braids his fingers have never fumbled over, the way that metals feel alive in his hands, the way he remembers more lifetimes than anyone should ever know. 

"Fíli and Kíli?" Thorin manages to say, almost without volition, and Baggins looks at first pleased, but then his expression shades into sorrow.

"Ah, you do know them."

"They are… my nephews," he says, carefully, truthfully, longingly.

"I wish I could give you better tidings," Baggins says, regretfully, "But…"

"They are dead." He wonders if they will always be dead, if he will always be too late, if Fíli and Kíli will live only in his memories and the tales of others.

Baggins nods. "Another group of you English came, and hunted out a group of French soldiers who were hiding in the hills. The French all died," and his voice has that quiet satisfaction that many Spaniards do when they talk of the death of those who have taken their King, and their pride, and their country, "But the fighting was hard, apparently, and, well…" He trails off. "Their Sergeant said they were brave." 

"Thank you," Thorin manages, and he is glad when Baggins doesn't ask further. Instead the two of them sit in silence as the night grows old and Thorin's men gradually stumble off to bedrolls and watch duties. Thorin doesn't sleep, and the priest keeps him company, waving off the innkeeper when the man looks to be objecting to Thorin's continued presence. Thorin isn't sure why the other man does stay, for he is hardly good company, lost in the regrets of centuries, but he is glad, and made more so when, as dawn approaches and the priest finally rises, he doesn't leave before quietly saying, "We buried them on the hill just north of the village; their Sergeant said they would have liked the view."

Duty comes first, as it always must.

Thorin returns to camp to give Bofur and Dwalin their orders, for he still means to leave before the day is far advanced, but it is not long before he is walking upwards through dry grass and cracked earth. He walks in the light of the rising sun, its rays gentle for the first and last time all day. It is not a high hill, and the grass is short, so it is not long before the hard angles of crosses are before him, and moments after he stands before two graves on a dusty Spanish hillside and wonders how he can feel so far away from home and yet the closest to belonging as he has ever known.

Insects are beginning to stir and buzz in the grass around him as he looks down at the two mounds, neatly packed earth and crudely inscribed crosses, and he wonders if he will ever again meet the sons he never claimed, or if he will be always tasked to search and search and find only empty houses, cold bones, and lonely graves. The sun is warming on his back as he sits against a close rock, and the village and his company seem very far away below him; a few words of Bifur's customarily nonsensical songs drift through the still air, but he almost feels as though the world is taking a breath and waiting, pausing in its rotation for a long, long moment, and giving him time.

Time to do what, he wonders, for what good is time now when he is two weeks late and many lifetimes tardy, when this is not the first time he has stood over graves and felt the loss of men he knows better than himself yet hasn’t met in lifetimes. The grief this time is deep and quiet, shrouded in dust and heat and the sound of crickets, and he can feel his knees creak as he shifts on the uncomfortable ground. He does not need to return to the camp yet, and so he tilts his head back and allows his eyes to close.

"Well," he says, and the sun is still warm, and the earth is still silent, and he feels so, so old. "I'm here."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, apologies for historical license, and full credit to Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series from which this draws a lot of flavour (Bernard Cornwell was apparently a formative influence on how I think of historical fiction!). 
> 
> This is set in March 1812, in Spain, just prior to the Siege of Badajoz. Thorin and Company are part of Wellington's forces, and the small town they end up bivouacking in is entirely invented, as is the skirmish that took place there that Fíli and Kíli died in. Gandalf is an Exploring Officer, riding behind enemy lines in full uniform (so as not to be mistaken as a spy) and gathering information - why does he particularly request Thorin's company as his escort in this instance? Well, wizards always know more than they will say, don’t they? His horse is, of course, the indomitable Shadowfax, but Thorin is unlikely to appreciate that. 
> 
> This whole story also apparently takes place in some universe where Bofur and Ori and all the others are acceptable and normal names - presumably last names in this section, given the period. Originally this ended with Thorin saying 'Well, hello boys', but then I did some digging and I am pretty sure that 'hello' in this period would be incorrect, as it wasn't until the late 19th century (so a good fifty, sixty years after this) that 'hello' began to be used as a greeting. Before then, as far as I can gather, it was more an expression of surprise or to draw attention to something, deriving from the french 'holla', and would have been used more in the sense of 'hello! What an almighty storm this is!' So, there you go, this is proving very educational.
> 
> I spent way too long working out irrelevant details of everyone’s backstory that never made it in because they weren’t actually a part of the story. If anyone is curious, Ori is the youngest son of a priest and was supposed to go into the church - hence his education - but decided that he wanted to see adventure, ran away in a plan to find some, and ended up getting drunk and tricked into joining the army. He's currently writing his memoirs, does survive, and publishes them when he returns home. Bilbo's mother, meanwhile, was the youngest daughter of a minor aristocrat, who ran off with an English diplomat sometime in the 1770s, causing scandal on both sides due to the somewhat tense English/Spanish relations at the time. They settled in a fairly small town, made a living running an inn, were deeply in love, and had Bilbo, who ended up joining the priesthood because he wanted an education. They then died during the French invasion of Spain, and Bilbo returned to his home town to be their local priest, from where he now passes information on to Exploring Officers like Gandalf. But none of this is actually relevant, so I shall stop inflicting it upon you all now!


	5. Touch A Shadow's Hand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Particularly pertinent warnings for this chapter: Major Character Death (a lot of it), more graphic descriptions of violence, implication of suicide and suicidal thoughts.
> 
> Chapter title from Simon and Garfunkel's 'Bleecker Street' (wow do these two have a lot of really haunting songs to pull sad titles from).

**Forty-seven: Touch A Shadow's Hand**

The forty-seventh time he remembers it is an overwhelming dream, a crashing deluge of memories, and he bolts upright from sleep, blinking his eyes open to darkness and giving himself a resounding crack upon the head when he meets the bunk above him with not some little force. He spits out several curses, curses echoed by Dwalin's grumpy voice from above, and then holds himself still until the normal sounds of the ship at night are the only things he can hear.

Sitting hunched in that insufficient space between bunks with creaks and snuffles surrounding him, all he can think is, _Fuck. Just what I need._

Of all the things Thorin was expecting to have to deal with when he enlisted, this was not one of them, and he has to think that he really could have done without it. He has enough to think about without the trailing memories of lives he can barely believe are his catching gentle fingers in his mind, enough to worry about without a deep urge that calls to him to search and seek, enough to concern himself with without the knowledge that he has always failed. And why should he succeed this time? He remembers seventy one lifetimes where he failed in his search - and one where he had everything he needed, yet did not realise it until it was too late and they were cold and dead on a battlefield - and he cannot see that this one will be any different.

So he tries to ignore it. Tries through the long hours of boredom as the _HMS London_ makes it way ever so slowly towards the Dardanelles, through Glóin's innumerable stories about his son, through Dori's fretting over anything he can find to be concerned about, through Nori's little schemes and Bombur's musings of home; through meals and sleep and games of cards, and a thousand, thousand waves, he tries.

He fails.

Fíli and Kíli tugs at his mind insistently, they worm his way into his head and sit just beneath his skull; every day he can remember something more, remembers handing them swords and axes and bows, remembers telling them of a dragon, of a home stolen and of a birthright they had to fight for, remembers verbally tearing into them when they are somehow responsible for the loss of a quantity of ponies, remembers relief as they smile at each other in golden firelight, remembers a thousand things he doesn't think he even noticed at the time. He wonders how he can have ever forgotten; he wonders if he is going mad; he wonders _why me?_

His mood grows progressively more foul, but it is only when he almost reduces Ori to tears - entirely unfairly, the poor lad had only been talking, if incessantly, about knitting patterns - that Dwalin takes him aside, sits him down, and then glares at him silently. Thorin glares back, but he is glad it is not Dori tearing strips off him, for the man is protective of his youngest brother, the youngest of their little group.

It is for the sake of that little group, Thorin knows, that Dwalin does this, for Dwalin has ever been uncomfortable talking about what ails people, ever since he and Thorin, and occasionally Balin when they could convince the older boy to join them, were running wild through the bush around their homes. If everything had been left up to Thorin, then their little group of three would never have expanded, but Balin had found friendship in Bofur and Óin, Dwalin had struck up some strange acquaintance with Bifur and a stranger one with Ori, and slowly a group had coalesced, so that one day Thorin had thrown himself to the ground after long hours of training in the unforgiving Egyptian sun, and wondered just how he had ended up with ten men - ten friends - in similar positions of exhaustion around him.

It is Dwalin who first breaks the silence, for Thorin hardly knows how to, though the question Dwalin asks helps little. "What's wrong with you, then?"

Thorin considers a hundred replies, and discards them: Dwalin has known him since he was a child, and will therefore not accept stories about hypothetical relatives; the truth merely makes it sound like he is going insane (an option that Thorin has not entirely set aside himself); mutterings about stress or fatigue or boredom will do little to satisfy his friend. Instead, he merely sighs, and says, "I don't know."

It is, after all, the truth.

Dwalin knows this - of course he does, he’s been able to tell when Thorin is lying for years - and unlike many others simply accepts it, only saying, "Ori deserves an apology," before getting up and leaving Thorin to his thoughts. Thorin almost misses dinner, but when he slides onto the end of the long bench next to Ori and gruffly makes some sort of inelegant apology, Dwalin offers him an approving nod, Ori beams at him happily, Dori removes him from his hitlist. Thorin thinks that he doesn't understand the other hims who now inhabit his head, doesn't know what he's going to do about that ever-present sense of things being missing, but perhaps it doesn't particularly matter. Actively seeking doesn't seem to have served him well before, he has friends now and here, motley collection though they may be, and perhaps the rest will simply fall into place.

Falling into place soon ceases to be a concept with any meaning behind it, for it is only hours after that dinner that they are in low boats creeping towards a dark shoreline, the confusion of their commanders offering little confidence as bullets scatter down among them and they are pushed to race up the first hill that they find. There are mutterings that surprise has been lost as they struggle through sand and a seemingly never-ending procession of dead-ending rises, and then all dissolves into confusion and gunfire, heat and death, and the next days run into one long unending nightmare, until they are dug into trenches less than a mile from where they landed, too close for comfort with both allies and the enemy.

When they next meet for a meal, Ori and Balin and Bofur are dead, and Bifur nearly there, and Thorin cannot see what they have gained beyond a beach - that is still being shelled - and some scrubby hills into which they are now digging deep. He does not know what occupies the minds of his commanders, so they perhaps consider this a victory - for they are all pieces in some game whose reach is wide and whose scope he cannot imagine - but he cannot see it as such. Not when Dori is not speaking and Dwalin cannot stop, memories of his elder brother spilling from his lips in disjointed fragments, not when Bombur is not eating or laughing but sitting only in silence, not when Óin can offer no counsel nor comfort, not when Bifur has part of a bayonet in his skull and lies insensible on a cot amidst the crying and the dying, not when Ori's body cannot be found and Balin's can be identified only by his dogtags, not when Bofur was cut down by machine guns with the rest of his battalion in an advance that never should have happened.

The days blend, heat and cramped confinement and artillery bombardment, until it seems as though they have always lived with twenty-thousand others in an area less than three-quarters of a mile square. It seems as though they have always had to swim amidst dropping shells, and always had to watch their comrades fall to dysentery or bullets. The days are split between hours of nothing, of waiting, and then frantic pushes forward, calls to advance, advance, advance, calls that end only in failure and with more bodies bloating in the space between the them and the Turks. Sometimes it is hard to remember that there is a life beyond this one, a world beyond this cove and these scrubby hills, but news reaches them of a world dissolved in war,of trenches tracing their way across France and Belgium, troops clashing in South Africa and other foreign places, and Thorin wonders why he has come across the world from his home to die beside a childhood friend.

And beneath it all, beneath the fear and the loss and failure, holding fast beneath futility and death and disease, are Fíli and Kíli. Thorin sometimes wonders if they are but feet from him, tucked somewhere into the maze of entrenchment that is the ANZAC base, or if they are perhaps suffering the same down at Helles. He hopes they are not - hopes that they are a world away, far from trenches and death, knowing of the war only through the rose-tinted windows that radio and newspapers will offer. Sometimes he wonders if they are already dead, lost on this battlefield or one miles away, if they are captured and suffering, if they are terrified in France or corpses in the Sinai. Often he hopes that he truly is mad, and that they are purely phantoms conjured by his mind, for otherwise he cannot see how they can avoid this war, this war that envelops all that is good about the world.

Often he thinks he should die; when Óin stumbles and Thorin turns to him to see blood from his mouth and fear and pain in his eyes before those eyes hold nothing; when he and Dwalin become separated on a slow creep up a hill, and he never sees him again; when Nori is one moment gambling matchsticks (they have little else) and the next lost in an explosion of earth and fire and fragments of limbs.

He doesn't die, somehow, clings to life when he is wounded, and when the ships finally come to take them away after eight months that last a lifetime, it is five of eleven who stand on the deck of a ship whose name Thorin cannot recall, watching as a shore that took from them more than they thought they could give recedes too slowly for the memories that claw at them, too quickly for the memories they are leaving behind. They all say nothing as they stand close, physical contact a reassurance that they are still here, still breathing, still living.

Bifur doesn’t speak now, the man that he once was dying underneath that bayonet, the man that he is now torn between silence, confusion, and rage, contemplative on his good days and angry and terrified on his bad. Glóin has but one link to a life where there is love and cheer and where death is far away, the wedding ring he does not wear for fear of losing it, but now he grasps it in his hand, barely daring to hope that now he might return to a green garden and a growing sun. Bombur's cheer has wasted away with his body, he wraps his arms around himself as a barrier against more than just the biting cold and does not turn away from the small scrap of land where his brother is buried. Dori is bitterness and anger wrapped up in regret, thrice written up for insubordination, once skating close to charges of disobeying direct orders and finding himself before a firing squad. When he starts forward out of their little cluster, Thorin almost reaches after him, but Bombur stops him with a single hand. Dori walks to the rail and lets fall from his grasp a scrap of bright wool, once carefully worked, now a memory of brothers he could not bury; it tumbles to the water below where it is lost in the turmoil of the ship's wake, bright and gone like so much else.

Egypt is supposed to be safe, but they are being retrained and they all know that it will not be long before they are sent elsewhere, sent to fight some other men who no more wish to be there than they do. Bifur has one of his bad days, and is taken away from them, sent back home to some hospital away from friends, but away from the war, so they are glad, even as Bombur grows ever more alone. They are four now, and they stick together as they go north, to some part of France or Belgium that is grey and dark, where the men are hollow-eyed and say, with a dark humour they all develop, 'This is the nursery, boys'.

And it is quiet for a time, as the days grow longer and the sun shines more, and they breath more freely. Thorin still does not ask after Fíli and Kíli, for he still does not think he wants to know; he cannot watch them die again, not this time, not when so many have died around him already. If he does not know, then he can believe they live far away, quiet and peaceful and happy, and above all alive, and Thorin needs that. While Gloin holds onto his wife and child and Bombur to returning to his cousin, Thorin holds onto golden memories of life and laughter, and refuses to acknowledge the end of all those times, the number of graves he has stood over and the number of times he has been too late. In this life, he will not be too late; in this life, he will not seek, for then he cannot fail; in this life, Thorin clasps close to his heart what he never wishes to touch, and thinks he - and they - are better for it.

Dori holds onto nothing at all, and perhaps that is why it is only he and Thorin that walk away from Pozieres, for they are the two that have nothing tangible to return to. They carry the memories of eleven, now, and it is Thorin who will tell a story of Gimli, and Dori who scrounges for extra supplies, Thorin who clumsily learns the fiddle, Dori who knits. They are old, the two of them, though neither of them have yet seen their twenty-second birthday, and boys look up to them with awe and fear and they feel even older. They feel older still when those boys die, and the two of them are again left among ashes and bones to remember.

They win, eventually, suddenly, so slowly and then all at once, and there is singing and dancing, the sun shines and suddenly the future exists once more, but the future cannot erase the past and memories shroud them like misty shawls. It doesn't seem quite real, that they may go home and fight no longer, and Thorin remembers three bright eyes boys who signed up together, who laughed on the transport to Egypt and dreamed of beating back the Huns. They have been beaten back, he supposes, but all he can see in the enemy is weary men who want to go home but do not know how, and he feels no differently himself.

But they do go home, he and Dori, the last ones of a group of eleven who tumbled together in the shadow of the Pyramids, go home to celebration and accolades, to tears, to victory, to loss, to mothers and fathers and sisters and children who could not follow and had to wait as news slowly drifted across oceans. Dwalin and Balin's mother embraces him, then cries into his hair until their sister gently leads her away; Dís flings her arms around Thorin and would never have let go if Frerin hadn't clamoured beside them to be allowed to hug his elder brother, and his mother waits for her turn, older and frailer than he has ever seen her. Seeing them there, whole and living and smiling, Thorin has never been so glad that Dís is a girl and Frerin too young, even if Frerin feels he missed a chance, and says that he wishes he could have gone. He says so only once, for the next night Thorin wakes them all with a nightmare, and is hollow and distant for the rest of the week, sleeping only when exhaustion forces him to.

He still does not search for Fíli and Kíli, even as life resettles and he drifts through his hometown, trying to remember how to - well, how to live again. He never searches, for somewhere within him he knows that they died alone and scared and far too young, but if he never finds out for certain then he can continue to pretend that they live untouched, happy somewhere with pretty wives and engaging children, that they grow old but no less full of laughter, that they live, live, live, truly live.

Thorin is never quite sure whether he lives.

He buys a house and meets with Dori once or twice a week; they say little but remember much, and they go together to see Bifur at the hospital twice a month. Bifur remembers them, sometimes, and sometimes there are good days, better days, where Bofur and Bombur and Óin and Glóin and Nori and Ori and Dwalin and Balin are gone but not forgotten, and it hurts a little less. Often there are bad days, where Bifur does not remember, or where he does and he rages, or where they cannot tell what he is thinking at all, and where their friends are dead and gone in pain and fear, and good memories seem impossible.

He meets his neighbour, a Mister Baggins who doesn't know how to deal with Thorin and his black moods and dark days, but who brings him gifts of cheese and pies and is never perturbed by surliness. He begins to invite Thorin over for tea, and Thorin never works out how to say no, and so he sits in Mister Baggins’ front room, and listens to him talk about the boys he is trying to get to appreciate literature, and wonders how it is possible that they are the same age. But he doesn’t say that, and he comes for tea again and again, and he never says much but Mister Baggins - Bilbo, as he becomes, saying that it is silly after all this time to not be on first name terms - doesn’t seem to mind, and sometimes they go for walks along the seafront and the sun seems almost warm.

He grows older, and Frerin has a string of silly girls until he settles with one who has the quickest mind Thorin has ever seen. Dís fights to go to university and wins, and then doesn’t bring a nice boy to dinner with her siblings, but a nice girl, and she looks to him - to all of them - in fear, and Thorin only hugs her, and hugs her girl, and can’t think of the words to wish them well, and doesn’t quite manage to not cry that night when Dís comes to him to talk, but he thinks Dís understands, understands that all he wants for her is love. She fights for her medical degree and fights to keep Linda by her side, and Thorin is so proud, of her and of Frerin, who holds his daughters like they are the most precious thing to ever grace the earth, who brings warmth and light to any room, and who can make even Thorin smile.

He goes to the remembrance ceremonies on Anzac day, stands beside Dori, stands in his uniform - his clean, clean uniform -with his medals and his shiny boots, and he wishes that he did not remember so much.

The world turns and he has three nieces - but no nephews, for which he is glad - and his house remains cold despite Bilbo's best efforts to press doilies and rugs and he knows not what upon him, and Thorin wonders how much of himself is still in 1915.

When Dori is hit by a car on a sunny Saturday morning, Thorin attends the funeral and remembers a laugh that has not been heard in years, a tendency to nag that was bludgeoned by death, remembers bad knitting and long days and dust and sand and mud and cold, remembers the _HMS London_ and all the boats after that, remembers laughing under the pyramids and bleeding in the trenches. When he stands up in front of everyone gathered - friends and colleagues and no relations, for Dori’s family are all under foreign soil, their only gravestones that of the Unknown Soldier - he gives a speech, the expected speech, the speech he practiced for Dís and Frerin and waited to hear their approval on, and he doesn’t say that he thinks Dori saw the car, doesn't say that Dori has been a ghost for years, and doesn’t ask when will he too be allowed to leave this life and all that he carries with him.

 

 

 

 

 

_Ridiculously Long Mostly Historical Note, Included Here Because It Wouldn't Fit In The End Notes Section:_  So, uh, first I think I need to apologise for killing off, um, basically everyone - that wasn't actually my intention when starting this, it just sort of happened...

The Gallipoli Campaign was an incredibly bloody part of an incredibly bloody war, with over 390,000 casualties (over 130,000 of whom died) in a period of just over eight months, from April 25th 1915 to January 9th 1916, and was a resounding failure for the Allies. The Allies wanted a trade route through to the Western Front, an attempt in 1914 to bribe the Ottoman Empire to allow such a route failed, and so in November 1914 Winston Churchill (then First Lord of the Admiralty) put forward the first plan for a naval attack at the Dardanelles. The plan was based on incorrect reports of Ottoman troop strength, and so when that attack was launched in February 1915 it was a resounding failure. The decision was then made to land ground forces to eliminate Ottoman artillery, and the Australian and New Zealand soldiers in Egypt undergoing training (apocryphally they were sent to Egypt for training rather than the UK as it was deemed cruel to make them undergo an English winter, though other sources say it is because the UK simply didn't have enough space for them) were formed into the Australian and New Zealand Army Corp (as the New Zealanders present objected to simply being referred to as Australasian), or ANZAC, and it is this that all our Company is a member of, as members of the 1st Division.

The HMS London was one of the three ships that supported the ANZAC landings at Anzac. A Formidable class warship, she survived the Gallipoli attack, then transferred into the Adriatic Sea to support the Italian navy in 1915 when Italy declared war on the Austria-Hungarian Empire, then from 1918 she served as a minelaying ship. She was sold for scrap to a German firm in 1922.

The first landing by the ANZAC troops at what later came to be called Anzac Cove was in the early morning on the 25th of April; British and French troops landed down the coast at Helles. There was a great deal of confusion in this initial stage, and the attack didn't gain the ground that was desired. The Turkish troops that defended the land they were landing on fought ferociously (their commanding officer Mustafa Kemel gave the famous order "I do not order you to attack, I order you to die! In the time which passes until we die, other troops and commanders can take our place!" to the 57th regiment; they were all either killed or wounded, and to this day the Turkish army has no 57th regiment in recognition of this) and so by the 28th of May the situation had turned into a stalemate, with neither side possessing the artillery to attack intrenched troops. The situation was similar at Helles, and so 8 months went on with little gain and a large death toll on both sides, until it was finally decided to withdraw.

The withdrawal from Gallipoli was perhaps the greatest success of the campaign, being accomplished in waves, with self-firing rifles triggered by water drops and hours of deliberate silence followed by renewed shooting convincing the Turks that their numbers were not decreasing. After withdrawal, the Anzac troops ended up back in Egypt, where they were expanded (many non-Australian or New Zealanders ending up included at this point) and retrained. About a quarter of them (mostly the mounted divisions, I believe) were sent to fight in the Sinai, while the others were all transferred to the Western Front, which is where Thorin and the remainder of his companions end up, in February 1916, near Armentieres on the French/Belgian border. Here the Anzac troops were absorbed into the British Expeditionary Force. The First Division was part of Anzac 1, which in July 191 was tasked with taking the Somme village of Pozieres - which they did, suffering 5000 dead or wounded in four days.

After that they were involved in taking Courcelette in October, then in early 1917 they chased the German army as it withdrew behind the Siegfried/Hindenburg line; the First division was also part of the Second Battle of Bullecourt, the Third Battle of Ypres and the Battle of Broodseinde, and then in April 1918 they stemmed the German Offensive as Hazebrouck. It remained active at Hazebrouck until it rejoined the rest (I think) of the Anzac troops at the Battle of Amiens, before helping to break the Hindenburg line later in 1918, and being engaged in fighting until Armistice Day.

A memorial erected in the 1980s at Anzac Cove (replacing an earlier 1934 memorial) bears the following inscription: 'Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives... you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours... You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.'

The quote is traditionally assigned to Mustafa Kemel Ataturk (previously mentioned above for famously defiant orders, but also founder of the Turkish Republic, its first president, and granted the surname Ataturk, or Father of the Turks, in 1934, after which it was forbidden to be given to anyone ever again) but whether or not he actually said it, or whether someone came up with it as a great thing he could have said that would be good for a memorial and then it got jumbled up with things that Ataturk and other Turkish leaders did say and in fact didn't come about until the 1970s/80s, is a matter of debate, and while he did make several speeches about the First World War, it is likely that this particular phrasing is artistic license from somebody else, though it has very much entered the cultural remembrance of the First World War, particularly in Australia and New Zealand, which says a lot, I think, about the way war memorials and remembrance works.

What lives were Fíli and Kíli living at this point? Unfortunately, I don't think anything with a particularly happy ending, but maybe it's best to take Thorin's view and not ask too many questions. And apparently Dís in this bears a lot of resemblance to Doctor Mac from Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries...


	6. Continue to Continue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from 'Flowers Never Bend With the Rainfall' by (surprise surprise!) Simon and Garfunkel.

**Forty-eight: Continue to Continue**

The forty-eighth time, he doesn't understand. He doesn't think he has ever seen them before, but he thinks that about a lot of the people that walk through his brain and into his room. Before - maybe a long time before, maybe a short time before, he isn't sure anymore - he would frown and shake his head when people talked to him, and tell them he didn't know them, but then they would say to him, "No, I am your neighbour", or "No, we… we grew up together", or "No, Uncle, I am your niece, remember?", and their faces would fold and crumple and collapse like the little paper boats the woman from the room down the hall folds. She puts them on the pond in the garden and they float for a bit, but she always forgets and leaves them for too long and they cannot sail proudly as they grow wet and collapse and become shapeless masses that sink down through dark water.

Thorin hates it when their faces do that, because it means he has said the wrong thing and hurt them even if they pretend otherwise, so now he doesn't say as much, and nods when people ask him if they know them, and agrees when they talk about people he cannot remember. Sometimes, he really does remember them, and then he will talk a bit more and their smiles will be less brittle and their cheer a thicker layer over a deep darkness, and he thinks he is doing well. When they are gone he will repeat their names to himself, shaping his mouth around the syllables carefully, repeating and repeating until he cannot remember what he is saying, and then it will be time for dinner and after that there will be glass in his mind again.

There is a lot of glass in his mind, dark and smooth and cold and enclosing his thoughts, twining through everything with splinters that catch on different memories, catch and snag and drag things to the surface, even if he doesn't understand why. Sometimes he beats against the glass, only able to catch flickers of colour and movement through its obscuring curves, beats to break through, to catch at names and memories and people, but usually he fails. Usually he is left sliding over shaded glass with hands that will not properly close and legs that will not always walk, and he looks out the window and wishes he could know, and then there is a knock on his door and he turns to look and there is that fear he will not know who it is, and sometimes he does, sometimes he knows it is Dís - who is sister - or Frerin - who is brother - or Dwalin - who is oldest friend - but sometimes he doesn't know and then he just makes a smile to put on his face and pretends to be happy they are there.

It is not always pretend, because he might not know who they are but they still want to see him and to talk to him, and he can tell - even he can tell - that they care, so he usually is glad when they come. When they are there the glass seems a little less dark and the colours of the world a little richer. But sometimes it is tiring because they talk too much and expect him to answer, and they are sad when he cannot answer and sad when he answers wrong, and sometimes it is tiring because they try so hard that he has to try too, and everyone pretends to be cheerful when they are not, and when they leave he continues to pretend he doesn't hear sobs outside his door.

This is why he does not want to ask who Fíli and Kíli are. He does not think they are any of the people that visit him. He thinks he would know them if they walked in the door, and so he wonders why they do not. He wonders if maybe they used to come before - when he thinks the glass was not as thick, when he thinks sometimes it broke and then the smiles around him were not forced - and he wonders if they will come again.

It is a good day when he does ask, when he gives up trying to break glass that will not yield and takes the direct route instead. It is sunny outside and it is Dís - who is sister - and Frerin - who is brother - who are there, and he knew them when they came. They talk about a house he can remember, and he says, "We used to climb those trees, and one day you fell and broke your arm - I have never heard such a scream!" and they nod and say, "Yes, yes, and you ran all the way to the house, remember?" and "I had that cast that was bright green and you and Dis drew on it so nicely that I almost wanted to keep it!" and he really does remember. The glass has splintered and he can see a little bit further and he smiles at the thought of being young, and eager to see the world, as all three of them were, and Dís and Frerin smile back, and when they fall into silence it is a warm silence, a soft, round, comfortable one, and so he asks.

"Who are Fíli and Kíli?"

He expects Dís interlace her fingers in the way she does when she is sad and does not wish her face to show it, and Frerin to look hard and still for a moment before he forces softness again, but they both look confused instead, and he learns that while his memories of Fíli and Kíli are fragmented and confused, and a long time ago, they have no memories of Fíli and Kíli at all. This he does not understand; he thought he was the one who was enclosed by glass and fog, who cannot not think into the past or recall the name of the red-haired woman who comes every day to take him to meals, but Frerin and Dís look at each other and shake their heads, and he wonders why he can remember these two laughing, bright boys amidst everything else he has lost.

They pass over that moment but still Thorin wonders, and the next time they come is a worse day, and this time when Thorin asks again after Fíli and Kíli Dis' hands do twine together and Frerin's face does go still for a long moment, but he still gets no answer and he is still confused. He stops asking after that, like he stopped saying he could not remember people, for he know he causes the people who visit him pain and he truly does not wish to do so, so he tell himself he must stop asking and instead Fíli and Kíli burn brightly only in his mind.

He is not sure if it is they who burn brighter or everything else that grows darker, but some day he looks up as the door opens and a dark-haired, regal lady enters and he cannot remember her name until later, after she has frozen horribly and then forced herself to continue as though nothing has happened. It is only later that he remembers Dís, who is sister, and he stares up at a dark ceiling and wonders what is becoming of him.

The darkness grows deeper, the glass closes off more, and now he beats against it and not even the tiniest of cracks are produced, and there is so much that is confusing, and yet - and yet - there are two bright spots still in his mind, and he embraces them, clasps them to him, and asks for Fíli and Kíli. And they might be bright in his mind, but they never come, and whenever he asks people just shake their heads and say, "We don't know them, Thorin, I'm sorry," and he doesn't know how that can be. How can they not know the only warmth and light that breaks beyond the glass that traps everything else? Why don't they come? Don't they know that he needs them?

He asks for them again, and again, and doesn't understand why the dark-haired lady is always sad, or why the smiling man doesn't come so often, and why when he does there are harsh whispers outside the door: "You should come more often, Frerin," and "I can't watch him like this; this isn't him anymore, Dís." Thorin rolls the names on his tongue but they don't make sense, they don't mean a thing, and when the door opens again he asks once more for the only two names that mean anything anymore.

And they do not come.

They do not come when it is no longer glass but iron and rock and dark, dark flames that hold him down. They do not come when everyone around him is a stranger who says they know him and he cannot know if they lie or not. They do not come when he loses other words and Fíli and Kíli are the only things that come to his lips.

They never come, and when the darkness is completed one Saturday morning in September, Dís wonders how she can hate two people she has never met, two people who were her brother's last words and the only ones he could think of when he could not remember her face, two people whose existence she doubts yet who were more important to her elder brother than anyone else as he died. 

She wonders if it is terrible to be glad that the stranger who wore her brother's face is dead. It feels like Thorin died a long time ago, and that the man who had lived in this room, who had sometimes had Thorin's smile or voice or laugh, but who more often than not could only manage the basest mimicry, it feels like that man had stolen her brother away from her, stolen the big brother who was her first memory, her rock and her safety, stolen him away piece by crumbling piece until nothing had been left.

Dís sits alone by the now empty bed of a man who had not remembered her in months, and she finally lets herself cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a change, I do not have an overly long historical note to add here.


End file.
